I’m with the Band

No I’m not, actually, the possibility being even more remote than it was 40 years ago, and it was remote then, but I can read about it, can’t I? The so-entitled book, written by Pamela Des Barres, a famous groupie who slept her way through the major bands (and some of the minor ones) of the late 60s, and early 70s, is a gripping and salacious read that has been brightening up my reading list lately. She was the prototype for Kate Hudson’s Penny Lane in the movie “Almost Famous.” Loved the movie, loved this book. No literary masterpiece, the material was just so fascinating and took me right back to that fabulous time when I was young and so was the world. It’s always good to be young, but our generation really lucked out. Perhaps you had to be there, as they say. I have tried unsuccessfully over the years to explain the feeling of those times to my children, but they seem to think the hippies and free thinkers were just drug taking sillies. Figures of fun. Perhaps it’s better this way? Why long for a time not your own.

Pamela, aka Miss P. or Miss Pamela, comes across in the old black and white photos as the most naturally pretty of her pack of groupies, with a lovely smile and her self respect amazingly intact. She describes an affair with Jimmy Page of “Led Zeppelin.” He felt jaded with sex at the ripe old age of 27. His suitcase had whips and other wicked devices in it that he didn’t use on her. “I wish I had met you before all this happened,” he told her, rather poignantly, I thought. Ozzy Osbourne, speaking of figures of fun, said that when his band, Black Sabbath got famous, “That’s when I joined the sex Olympics.”

On the book’s back cover, Robert Plant says in 1986 (publication date) “A thousand pardons Miss Pamela for the premature ejaculation.” Plant comes across as a nice guy in the book and I decided to hunt him down on YouTube interviews. What an intelligent, witty guy! At one point the interviewer asks him if he listens to his old music and what he’s doing these days. Plant says that big fame ended when he was 32. Thirty two!! “You may think of Robert Plant or Led Zeppelin every few years or so. I’ve had to go on living every day since then, still being Robert Plant.” He had come to terms with his early fame. He still liked to sing, liked music, had friends and a regular life. He looks about a hundred. Time has not been kind. He could have gotten a face lift with the resultant lizard face so ubiquitous to Hollywood, but he lives quietly in England, where he doesn’t need one. He came across as sensible. It must take strength of character to live a normal life after all that carrying on. At the end of my third YouTube interview, I was ready to sleep with him, wrinkles and all. (Mine and his.)

Speaking of sex, and romance, I came across something shocking, amazing and heart warming the other day. One of the idols of my youth in those long ago 70s, Noam Chomsky, got married last year. At 85! It looks as if he’s married a Brazilian woman who must be about 50-55. They are heading down there to meet her parents for their one year anniversary. Now he’s 86!

I was just blown away, as they say. Romance. Sex. Noam Chomsky!

He even made some comment about the world being so full of a number of things and how we should all be as happy as kings. No, but close. He said despite all the awful things going on there is still room for great joy in this life. And that he believed we were all related to bonobo monkeys and that our deepest desires were to love and be loved. And with that, I believe Miss Pamela would concur.

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Changing tone slightly, isn’t it a crying shame that the vote on the left is so split! By the time this gets to you we might have already voted and my call, my clarion call to vote NDP will have gone unheeded. I can’t tell you how to vote, but please, please vote for them. Harper’s been there so long and just seems so unlike a person you would like to share a beer with, or a glass of white wine. Or even a walnut, goat cheese and beet salad. Can we do those things with Mulcair? Probably not. But vote for him anyway. Why? Because the people behind him are nicer. Way nicer. And Mulcair’s just trying really hard to be careful and not blow it. You must know the feeling. I certainly do.
Whatever the outcome of this nerve wracking election, we must keep in mind Noam’s bizarre observation about those bonobo monkeys. Love is all there is.